One of the best ways to train your horse to be a calm, respectful and responsive partner on the trail is to never pass up a training opportunity. When you ride your horse outside the arena, there will be plenty of opportunities to expose him to new objects and reinforce old lessons.
In this short series, I’m going to share four tips to keep in mind when working on building your horse’s confidence with an unfamiliar object.
Tip #3: Dial Your Horse In
If you feel that your horse is going over the obstacle on “autopilot” and not really paying attention to where he’s putting his feet, wake him up by training on him. Rather than just letting him stumble over the obstacle, give him a reason to pay attention to you. For example, let’s say you’re asking your horse to cross a log. Let him walk up to the log. Then stop him and back straight away from it. Back him with some hustle in his feet. Then ride him up to the obstacle again, and retreat again. Then approach and go over the obstacle. You’ll find that a short little tune-up like that will wake the horse up and get him thinking about what you’re asking him to do.
Read Tip #1: Go Through Your Horse’s Feet to Get to His Mind here.
Read Tip #2: Be Patient With Your horse here.
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